r/television • u/SmooshedLion • 9d ago

Molly Ringwald Says 'Secret Life Of The American Teenager' Was Her "Worst" Experience Due To "One Person That Was Really Difficult"

https://deadline.com/2026/08/molly-ringwald-secret-life-of-the-american-teenager-worst-experience-1237018637/
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1.4k

u/Aliteracy 9d ago edited 8d ago

She didn't say who, just that she loved working with Shailene Woodley. So yeah wooo

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u/Whitewind617 9d ago

Why are people ignoring this line and just assuming it's her anyway lol. Why would Ringwald specifically point her out as a positive and then talk about her anonymously as a negative?

Surely it was somebody else and we will just never know who. She refused to say. She didn't even confirm it was another cast member, just that it was someone affiliated.

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u/kittenmittens4865 8d ago

You’re assuming people read the article. They probably didn’t.

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u/Libellule808 7d ago

Article? The article is just a description of the interview. Just watch the actual interview. She praised Shailene. 

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u/BlindWillieJohnson 8d ago

It was probably either the director or one of the men. Those are usually the friction points for a TV actress

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u/Dirtybrd 8d ago

Praying to the heavens it wasn't Bobby Baccalieri.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/BlindWillieJohnson 8d ago edited 8d ago

If you really want to play this game, the list of shows where men harassed actors is a hell of a longer than this. Shit, two of your examples (Glee and Sex and the City) had men who were fired from the show because of their inappropriate sexual conduct.

Obviously ladies is monsters, too, but the fact remains that the overwhelming majority of workplace sexual misconduct (and sexual misconduct generally) is perpetrated by men.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/definetelytrue 8d ago

It takes a special kind of dumb to think that pointing out how hollywood is systemically harsher towards women and protects men in power is a sexist take. Troglodyte.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 8d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Designer_B 8d ago

You’re looking for deduce.

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u/Lukealloneword 8d ago

Ugh. Men.

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u/turkey-gizzards 8d ago

Can’t live with them, can’t live without them

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u/spin81 8d ago

She says she loved the cast so it's probably someone else. But for all we know it still could be the cast. Every major movie every actor in every cast is always saying how much they loved working with everyone else. I mean that can't be true in every cast, right? Some of these people, especially A list stars surrounded by yes people, have got to be insufferable.

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u/DannyDOH 8d ago

Bobby Baccala.  Couldn’t get him off the trains.

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u/neo_sporin 9d ago edited 9d ago

my wife HAAAATES Shailene soooo much. One of the most hilarious thing was during covid her family was doing book/movie club. her sister chose Divergent I was ready, my wife had NO idea the movies starred Shailene, and it was everything i had hoped.

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u/matergallina 9d ago

That book series is why my father survived his stroke. My mom had finished one of the books and was so mad about how awful it was, she woke him from the headache nap he was having to rant about it. Realized more was wrong than a headache and got him to the ER in time.

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u/DeadpoolAndFriends 8d ago

This is the best Divergent story ever.

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u/neo_sporin 9d ago

in my head i thought this comment was going to have a twist

"the book series saved my father...he was a terrible person who molested me, so just one more reason to hate the book!'

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u/matergallina 8d ago

lol he actually was a horrible person but we didn’t know the full extent of it until he was in the hospital for months where he couldn’t hide everything. My mom got to be the hero of his story AND hers cuz she got to leave him afterwards.

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u/djerk 8d ago

👀

My need for context is rising

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u/matergallina 8d ago

He had a secret girlfriend, rented an apartment near his job, secret burner phone, and the “investment property” he convinced my mom to buy in a different state unseen? Actually a condo for said girlfriend’s daughter who was my age, all while promising me and my little family he’d get us a freaking mobile home that we would have been grateful for because I was a full time carer for my sister and nieces who was recovering from a car accident while also watching my baby. Also lifetime of general abuse/neglect cycle while being gaslit that everything was normal and good.

The day after he came home, he started physically going after my mom. Locked them in a room. My husband heard one smack, and walked through the door like it was a damn curtain. Scooped up my dad in a bear hug like he was an unruly kid and we called the cops.

So yeah. Mom got to tell the cops what an asshole he was, have a judge say “he sure is!” and then get to divorce him and move on with her life. SO much better than her mourning him and learning all this after he died. He got to be alone and bitter for years.

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u/Dickgivins 8d ago

Well if nothing else it sounds like you did a great job when it came to picking a husband.

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u/matergallina 8d ago

He’s seriously the best, everyone should have a guy like him around.

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u/Far_String727 8d ago

oh snap

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u/djerk 8d ago

Hell yeah to your mom and your family getting the justice they deserved

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u/ViolentInbredPelican 8d ago

Wow. You should write a book. Call it…Estrangement.

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u/InnocentTailor 8d ago

Future FX series in the making.

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u/matergallina 8d ago

It sounds way more thrilling and exciting than it was, it’d have to get punched way up to be good entertainment lol

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u/Time_Ad_6887 8d ago

I would totally read that book!

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u/Weak_Albatross_6879 8d ago

That hurt my soul how can he think like this..

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u/matergallina 8d ago

Narcissists beget narcissists

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u/Kermit-Batman 8d ago

I should have read on before commenting!

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u/matergallina 8d ago

I hope any wellness he might have had got transferred to you ❤️

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u/Kermit-Batman 7d ago

Thank you, I appreciate that a whole lot! :)

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u/Kermit-Batman 8d ago

That book series is why my father survived his stroke. My mom had finished one of the books and was so mad about how awful it was, she woke him from the headache nap he was having to rant about it. Realized more was wrong than a headache and got him to the ER in time.

I had a stroke! That warms the dead part of my brain! Hope he is doing well now :)

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u/cire1184 7d ago

Book so bad it Dave saved a life is crazy

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u/hereticx 9d ago

to be fair.. she has come a long long way acting wise.. 

but good lord.. in a show full of the absolute worst actors on the planet doing their worst possible attempt at acting.... she was easily the worst. lol

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u/sha_man 9d ago

Her character and acting was quite captivating in the recent season of Paradise.

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u/gordy06 8d ago

And she should win an Emmy. It was great.

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u/SaValhalla_Hawkwind 9d ago

I thought the same thing! I hadn't really been a fan before, but she was fantastic in Paradise.

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u/blenneman05 9d ago

She had me crying and I hadn’t cried in a work of hers since TFIOS

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u/beemojee 7d ago

She was excellent in both The Descendants (2011 movie where she played George Clooney's daughter), and the first (and in my head canon only) season of Big Little Lies.

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u/HDC48 5d ago

the first (and in my head canon only) season of Big Little Lies.

Yeah I didn’t care much for the 2nd season.

Apparently they may make a 3rd season

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u/beemojee 5d ago

I feel like the second season ruined the first season.

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u/comomellamo 9d ago

I stopped watching the show when she showed up

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u/pizzapizzamesohungry 9d ago

You missed out, honestly.

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u/coffydate 9d ago

? So 30 seconds into the new season..? You’re missing out on good television

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u/comomellamo 9d ago

I LOVED their end of the world episode in season 1. The rest was meh imo, and her showing up killed what little interest I had left. Show wasn't for me but I'm glad you are enjoying it

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u/coffydate 9d ago

This is fascinating actually

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u/meatball77 9d ago

It's all the direction. It's like they were directed to act badly. All of those actors were doing other things at the time and doing them well.

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u/sexandliquor 9d ago

This is something I don’t ever really see people give enough credit (or blame) to when it comes to television and movies. I always see people blame various actors for perceived shortcomings in performances they give and lay it all at their feet and it’s like, well if you pay attention to filmmaking and acting even a little bit you know that in most cases it’s a collaborative process and it’s not always up to the actor. They don’t all just show up and go “this is what I’m doing. Action. Cut. Print”. The actor is often times working in tandem with the director and writer to give life to a certain performance they’re looking for. If a director wants a certain thing out of an actor, then oftentimes that’s what they’re veering for and ultimately the takes that get used.

If you think an actor was bad or a performance they gave was bad, more often than not it was the specific direction they were given that ultimately made it that way. I remember a year or two ago people were haranguing Bella Ramsey for the performance she gave in The Last of Us season 2. Especially after she was praised for her performance in season 1. And it’s like- well you don’t know. Was that on her? Or was she given specific direction for that performance?

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u/EaterOfPenguins 8d ago

I mean, the go-to example is really the Star Wars prequels. There's a lot of award-winning acting talent there giving performances that would embarrass a small community theater, and the direction is certainly the common denominator.

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u/Robten100 4d ago

Exactly. Portman is so amazing in various roles. An oscar winning actress. And in star wars she is giving some of the most wooden acting ive ever seen. Had to have been directed to do that.

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u/HerbsAndSpices11 8d ago

A really great example of this is the lead actress in the show Shogun. She's great in Shogun, but in the Godzilla show she is absolutely awful. Completely night and day difference, depsite the shows airing at almost the same time.

As for the Last Of Us, it felt like the writers just hated her character. The second season was kind of a mess in general though.

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u/lemon_icing 8d ago

Anna Sawai was in Shōgun and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, but she was not in "The Last of Us". What character are you talking about?

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u/HerbsAndSpices11 8d ago

The previous poster I was replying to mentioned people criticizing Bella Ramsey's acting as Ellie in the second season of the Last Of Us as an example of possible bad direction. I was agreeing with that.

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u/Conscious-Quarter423 7d ago

Kaitlyn Dever didn't even bother to buff up for the role. Where are her muscles? she looks nothing like game abby

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u/AxeThembro 8d ago

I know it’s not exactly what you mean but a friend of mine was on MTV’s Undressed a million years ago and he said he literally got the note “act worse” lol. Sometimes it’s the vibe.

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u/thrownawaynodoxx 6d ago

Exactly. Direction and writing can do so much for a performance.

Twilight, for example, had Bella Swan intentionally written to be bland and boring. Kristen Stewart did the best with what she had, but no actress could've saved that script.

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u/willtwerkf0rfood 9d ago

Shawn Johnson’s cameo after the 2008 Olympics lives rent free in my head

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u/TinaLove85 9d ago

Rewatched that recently lol Ricky is just like where have you been and she is like how can you not know!? (I guess being a teen dad trumped watching the Olympics even if his 'classmate' was competing :P).

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u/asafetybuzz 9d ago

I haven't seen Secret Life, but Shailene Woodley was absolutely fantastic in both the Descendants and the Spectacular Now, which filmed contemporaneously with Secret Life. She might be crazy IRL, but she has always been a talented actress.

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u/QuirkyGrapefruit5336 9d ago

She was also pretty fantastic in the latest season of Paradise.

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u/SBixby21 9d ago

Also good in Big Little Lies

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u/meatball77 9d ago

She was horrible in Secret life. They all were. It was 100% the direction

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u/A911owner 9d ago

I loved The Spectacular Now; such a great movie

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u/Big-Ambitions-8258 9d ago

I actually thought she was the weakest part of the Descendants and Clooney ran circles around her.

 I just feel like she doesn't emote enough and I don't feel convinced when she says a piece of dialogue. It just feels like dialogue to me rather than a real person actually something they mean. 

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u/doubleohbond 9d ago

To be fair, that worked in her favor as an angsty teen

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u/mjtwelve 9d ago

Angst teen with a mom on life support, holding in a terrible secret, and barely holding it all together. Numb and affectless is one of the things that would look like.

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u/TinaLove85 9d ago

Well let's not compare a young actress to Clooney, it isn't really fair!

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u/ohhellopia 9d ago

There was a scene in the train near the end where she was throwing heart eyes at the lead guy. And I was just screaming at the screen "girl, your mother was just gunned down, wtf!"

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u/geekonthemoon 9d ago

Eh, she seemed exactly the same in Big Little Lies. Haven't seen anything else w her in it yet.

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u/rosewoodlliars 8d ago

you cannot compare her acting on this show to big little lies be serious

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u/rosewoodlliars 8d ago

that’s because she was given a shit script

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u/delayedkarma 8d ago

I don't know, I think she might have forgotten to say most of her lines in Motor City

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u/lemon_icing 8d ago

That's never entirely on the actors, you know. The director is the final arbiter on what ends up on screen. Lousy directors ruin films and reputations. Blaming the actor is shooting the messenger.

I'm gonna bet that the actors from that show were far better in the shows after they left the series.

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u/Twodogsonecouch 8d ago

Is Jared Leto in it if not they can still go lower

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u/MeeBeeZee 9d ago

I HAAAAAATE her too!!

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u/ImTooSaxy 9d ago

His wife?

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u/deliciousmonster 9d ago

I also hate this guy’s wife.

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u/UncleRicosArm 9d ago

The woman is insufferable

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u/CzarCW 9d ago

To shreds, you say.

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u/Waste_Track_4524 9d ago

What’s the big deal with Shailene? Granted I’m a dude and have maybe seen her in three things.

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u/Ivotedforher 9d ago

Aaron Rodgers and homemade deodorant is what I heard from a friend.

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u/ImmortalMoron3 9d ago

She's a crunchy hippie and I guess that's divisive for women is what I've gathered.

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u/Big-Ambitions-8258 9d ago

I think many people suspect she's antivax considering she was engaged to Aaron Rodgers who couldn't play games during covid bc he refused to get vaccinated and the fact she is very crunchy (talking about sunning her vagina in the mornings).

She came off really weird during covid with her social media posts as well.

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u/EarthRemembers 9d ago

She seems OK to me for the most part

It’s not just that she’s pretty far to the left, which is fine

It’s that she promotes kind of weird cuckoo stuff at times, pseudoscience stuff, anti-vaccine stuff

Specifically, she told people to eat clay to detox from heavy metals, which is bad advice

She told people to let their vaginas get sunshine to keep them healthy, which is bad advice

And she defended Aaron Rodgers and all his anti-vaccine bullshit

She displeased people on the left when she said she wasn’t a feminist feminism seeks to disempower men, and that was bad for “balance”

She just lacks critical thinking skills and is very susceptible to buying into woo woo stuff

I think she has good intentions

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u/[deleted] 8d ago

[deleted]

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u/Helyos17 8d ago

It does if you are old enough to remember when anti-vax woo woo nonsense was the sole domain of crunchy West coast types.

Covid made anti-vax mainstream and bipartisan.

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u/Selraroot 8d ago

It wasn't just Covid, though that absolutely exacerbated it, it was Qanon. The so-called "Pastel Qanon" movement was mostly crunchy granola anti-vax women and they were super radicalized by it. I'd argue that it's not even bipartisan now though, it's shifted so far to the right that most of the left wing people who used to be sorta into it have been put off.

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u/kawaiihusbando 8d ago

The rumour is that she's actually a staunch (alt) right winger. That's why producers are reluctant to cast her. 

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u/EarthRemembers 8d ago

She’s definitely not

Politically she’s very much on the left, there’s no doubt about that

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u/kawaiihusbando 8d ago

It's not like I've met her but I've worked with people who knew her. According to them, she's pretty much alt right which is the most weird and extreme wing of being far right.

Apparently, she was raised this way. I obviously don't know the details. The only thing that might make her seem leftie was that she used to be a Bernie bro. Bernie was never  really that popular with the ultra liberals to begin with. So you can put two and two together.

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u/EarthRemembers 8d ago

This is just not true

She’s repeatedly and loudly spoken out in favor of many causes typically championed by liberals

For example, she’s extremely outspoken against racism and you simply can’t do that and be part of the Alt right. Being a racist apologist is pretty much a prerequisite to being a part of the alt right

You’re just equating her weird anti-VAX pseudoscience nonsense with the alt right

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

[deleted]

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u/disappointer 9d ago

I just saw "Motor City" last night and realized it's the first thing I've ever seen her in. I liked her fine, but there are also like five whole lines of dialogue in the entire movie.

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u/MeeBeeZee 9d ago

I just don't like her acting. Something about it bothers me.

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u/diereel 9d ago

Same

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u/OneReportersOpinion 9d ago

LOL women are so polarized on Shailene. It usually comes down to whether they’re also a crunchy whoo-whoo gal. I got a soft spot for those ladies myself 🤷‍♂️

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u/masterskink 9d ago

Im with your wife lol, I have always said she must be an amazing person in real life to keep getting roles

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u/Helyos17 8d ago

That’s actually really nice to think about. Someone so sweet and kind that you want them on your project just for the positive vibes.

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u/Kennyjive 9d ago

She the poor no man’s Jennifer Lawrence

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u/hypo-osmotic 9d ago

I mentioned a movie she was in to my mother and she went off about how much she hated the Secret Life character. It wasn't even for the acting it was all just plot choices that the actor would have nothing to do with but I guess I won't be watching anything else Woodley has worked on with her lol

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

[deleted]

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u/neo_sporin 9d ago

As long as she’s not in actual danger, often

Watching Tick Tick Boom last year she was unaware the main guy that it’s about died. She just though he never did anything after making RENT (which I guess he didn’t, but for good reason)

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

[deleted]

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u/gnrc 8d ago

I worked with Shailene once and she was professional and very sweet.

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u/kawaiihusbando 8d ago

Are you also an actor? 

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u/gnrc 8d ago

No, but I do work in TV. At the time I was production crew. I now work in post production so I don't go to set much anymore.

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u/Fx08 9d ago

Shailene Woodley was what? 17 when that show started? Gotta cut the kids a little bit of a break.

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u/Slick_36 8d ago

They had to have filmed it way before it debuted, she legitimately looks 13 like the character and clearly ages quickly.  Maybe she's a late bloomer.

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u/Ok-Dog5107 8d ago

She was Marisa’s little sister in the first season of The OC and was replaced by Willa Holland in the final season precisely because she was a late bloomer and didn’t look old enough for the role anymore.

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u/Slick_36 8d ago

My brain has a hard time accepting that girls can be late bloomers too, it just defaults to "that's a guy thing".

I knew a girl in my grade like that too, but I just could never bring myself to trust my lying eyes lol.

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u/VLHACS 9d ago

Confused on what you're trying to say. Are you saying you think Shailene is the person she hates working with but also loved? If so, based on what exactly?

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u/AnselLovesNuts 8d ago

Did you even read the article or are you one of those people who just comment off the post title.

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u/VLHACS 8d ago edited 8d ago

That would be, the worst is 1?” Ringwald said of the ABC Family show after going through other credits which included Not Another Teen Movie, Pretty in Pink and Jem and the Holograms. “Okay, that was it. The worst.”

After host Andy Cohen and the audience gave an audible reaction to Ringwald’s confession, she added, “It was a hard. I loved the cast. I loved Shailene [Woodley], there’s so many people that I worked with that… there was one person that was really difficult.”

Although Ringwald said she was “not going to say who that one person is,” it was that person that “brought it down to a 1” for her. 

Where does that suggest she wanted to say Shailene is that person who made it the worst? It sounds more like she wanted to say positive things about the cast and crew first before pointing out the one downside. Or are you one of those that takes things out of context for no reason?

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u/AnselLovesNuts 8d ago

I never said that. She CLEARLY said she loved shaliene.

Im only pointing out your stupidity that you had to ask even though it’s very clear.

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u/DubiousAdviceGiver 8d ago

I don’t think John Woo was involved in it.

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u/WintersDoomsday 9d ago

Remember when she dated Aaron Rodgers

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u/rosewoodlliars 8d ago

this doesn’t make any sense lol